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Facilitating Collaboration in ReseArch and Development to Foster Further Innovation in European AeroNautics

Fact Sheet

Reporting

Results

Objective

Aviation is a vital industrial sector of Europe’s society and economy. For several historical reasons the economic activities in this field are unevenly distributed across Europe. Statistics show that also the R&D effort, which always comes along with the aviation, mirrors this allocation. On one hand, there are countries and regions featuring low involvement in aviation research and also low participation in the EU Framework Programmes; on the other – some regions are heavily involved in aviation R&D and are origin of wealth and prosperity.RADIAN is a multi-step project which intends to overcome this misbalance by identification of barriers for international collaboration in aviation research at EU level and by subsequent development and verification of solutions and measures on level of the European regions.

The initial step is to assess the impact of regional, national and international environment on aviation actors. An impact is considered to become a “barrier” in case it has a detrimental nature or significantly differs from the pan-European average. By systematically comparing single impact scenarios for various actors located in different European regions, barriers for cooperation will be identified.

Having this verified knowledge, 12 target regions are identified to derive, verify and execute tailored activity plans aiming at the enhancement of the actor’s ability to cooperate by reducing the disadvantageous impact or by the advancement of actor’s own assets, knowledge and abilities.

Another field of work of RADIAN is a self-sustaining collaboration platform which acts as a host for transnational exchange. The platform aims at becoming a live portal, for providing personalised information related to the users’ interests such as open calls, available funding schemes, recent advancements etc.

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RADIAN (Facilitating Collaboration in ReseArch and Development to Foster Further Innovation in European AeroNautics)

1. Problem and societal relevanceAs the aviation sector is a fast growing sector of Europe’s economy and is associated with a wide range of economic and societal benefits – acting as a catalyst of technology transfer to many fields of mainly industrial application and vice versa – it is expected that those European regions that will strengthen their Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) cooperation in aviation activities will significantly benefit both in medium and in long term.Established supply chains feed aircraft and helicopters industries and – to some extent – the general aviation (GA) industries. The air transportation sector is the key market of the aircraft industry and links downstream to many subsequent sectors e.g. the tourism sector.ASD statistics show the dominant position of the industry in UK, France, and Germany et al. All EU member states really successful in AAT are also GARTEUR nations benefitting from decades of practical cooperation in aeronautics research. Other countries and regions hardly appear. Imbalance becomes evident also between Eastern and Western European nations. EC statistics indicate that the newer member states are less successful in Collaborative RDI projects.There is a strong need to identify the main reasons that block efficient cross-European AAT research cooperation. Especially those regions should be considered where the actual cooperation level lacks the possibilities, capacities and skills, including recently associated countries as e.g. the Ukraine.

2. Goal and objectivesThe main goal of RADIAN is to contribute to achieve a more integrated European research environment in AAT where: - Researchers and engineers from academia as well as from commercial companies cooperate in a fully integrated network irrespective of their location, size and financial possibilities. - Europe is getting more competitive in emerging new developments (such as the Unmanned Air-craft Systems’ market) by building new supply chains if necessary thus opening opportunities for further European commercial companies. - The European aeronautics and air transport industry integrates organisations from Europe in order to provide added value at European scale.

The main goal of RADIAN is to increase the H2020-participation of organisations from emerging European aeronautics countries, tapping the real problems, and proposing solutions for more efficient cooperation. Participation in winning proposals and research projects are means to achieve progress. Thus, the main goal of RADIAN means to initiate sustainable RDI cooperation.

In order to realize this main goal RADIAN aims at the following top objectives: - Identifying the main reasons that hamper the efficient utilisation of European AAT research cooperation. - Facilitating the cooperation among players from less developed regions and from key aeronautics areas. - Sharing of best practices with all possible European actors in order to enable them to continue the cooperation beyond the duration of RADIAN.